Like the idea of more than 5,500 NFB films at your fingertips? Visit the state-of-the-art Digital Viewing Stations at the NFB Mediatheque! Alone or with a friend, settle into one of the spacious and stylish digital viewing stations, where the flat-panel monitors put an endless array of hard-hitting documentaries, innovative animations, captivating shorts, new releases, and old favourites right at your fingertips—literally! With 16 digital viewing units equipped with touchscreen monitors and multiple search options, the NFB Mediatheque offers more than 5,500 films, available ON DEMAND!

When’s the last time you saw NFB classics like A Chairy Tale, Blinkity Blank, The Cat Came Back or The Sweater? Or Oscar® favourites like Ryan and The Danish Poet? With captivating documentaries, animations and new titles added weekly, there’s always something new to watch at the NFB Mediatheque.

OVER 5,500 FILMS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

Settle into a custom screening on our Digital Viewing Stations. Experience hard-hitting documentaries, innovative animations, short films that are long on impact, new releases, archival footage, cinema classics and award winners of every genre.
Our collection includes recent Oscar winners The Danish Poet and Ryan, classics such as The Log Driver’s Waltz and The Sweater plus the acclaimed documentaries Tiger Spirit and Shake Hands with the Devil.

Only $2 per person per day! Free for kids 12 and under.

New films include:

Passchendaele
114 min
Director: Paul Gross
Set during the height of WWI, Passchendaele tells the story of Sergeant Michael Dunne (Paul Gross), a soldier who is brutally wounded in France and returns to Calgary emotionally and physically scarred. While in the military hospital in Calgary, he meets Sarah (Caroline Dhavernas), a mysterious and attractive nurse with whom he falls in love. When Sarah's younger asthmatic brother David (Joe Dinicol) signs up to fight, Michael feels compelled to return to Europe to protect him. Michael and David, like thousands of Canadians, are sent to fight in the third battle of Ypres, a battle against impossible odds, commonly known as Passchendaele.


Night Mayor
10 min
Director: Guy Maddin
Guy Maddin's latest fantastical film is the story of inventor Nihad Ademi, who harnesses the power of the Aurora Borealis in 1939 Winnipeg. Ademi uses the power to broadcast images of Canada to its own citizens from coast to coast, but in the process angers the government.

Watch what you want when you want on our Digital Viewing Stations and more! Get your NFB Mediatheque VIP Access Passes today!

FRONT ROW VIP ACCESS PASS

More than 5,500 films for the price of a single movie ticket!

Access to 5,500+ films, 7 days a week, 360 days a year

NFB Film Club membership
$12 individuals, $10 students / seniors, $15 dual / family

$2 day passes available

Pint-sized VIPs? Kids' films are free for the 12 and under set.

NFB Mediatheque Hours:
Tuesday - Wednesday: 12 pm - 7 pm
Thursday – Saturday: 12 pm - 10 pm
Sundays: 12 pm – 5 pm

The NFB MEDIATHEQUE in Toronto is a unique facility, offering intimate film viewing experiences for groups and individuals of the National Film Board of Canada's award-winning collection.

The NFB collection is stored on a 7 terabyte hard disk array using MPEG-4 format for encoding. More than a compression standard, MPEG-4 provides interactivity and superior image quality. MPEG-4 integrates multimedia content, facilitating interactive and feature-rich applications such as closed captioning and subtitling.

The collection on the hard-disk array will be complemented with Canarie’s broadband Network, CA*Net 4. CA*net 4 uses a 40-gigabyte bandwidth system that streams the quality of DVDs at an average of 10 megabits per second. For comparison, the Internet currently streams data an average of 300-500 kilobits per second. Currently, cinema-quality images are streamed to schools, universities and other research facilities on the CANARIE Network.

A growing selection of the NFB's collection will be accessible at all 24 screens at the NFB MEDIATHEQUE, including digital viewing stations, the Atelier and the 79-seat Cinema. The personal viewing screens are superior image quality HDTVs, offering high-definition flat-screen 16x9 cinema display.

All digital viewing station users have instant access to NFB productions. With the simple touch of a finger on a screen, people can browse the NFB's online catalogue through an advanced multi-criteria search engine and immediately watch the film of their choice on demand and at their own pace. The collection is easily browsable due to the extensive cataloguing, indexing and database integration. The visual index includes nine still images and an excerpt from each film. This adds a special dimension to the screening experience, facilitating research for professionals, cinephiles and the curious.

The NFB began preparing its collection for on-line and on demand use, before the Internet was widely used by the public. Comprehensive visual and subject indexation started 20 years ago to allow precise access to the NFB collections and answer the specific needs of the public. Providing visual and data information with all NFB materials allows users to fully search the collection and affords a better understanding of the film before the viewing experience.